Review of Modded MusicHall 25.2 CDP
I just received my Music Hall CD25.2 CDP back from Doug Jesse at Reference Audio Mods a few days ago and thought I would do a review. I modded the CDP because although it had a very detailed, transparent and live sound to the music, it tended to have a fatiguing almost harsh sound with some electronic glare when paired with my Adcom receiver. I think it would have been fine with a warmer receiver. The following mods were done at a cost of $750. (I know, I could have bought a Rega Apollo for just a few hundered more and probably should have. I decided to do the mod after Doug told me the DAC's in the Music Hall player are of high quality and are found in $5000 players)
I replaced the stock Clock with a state of the art Super Clock 4 which decreases jitter and digital electronic glare.
Replaced the cheap 0608 Burr-Brown op-amps with the more expensive 0627 OA's
replaced diodes and capacitors in the power supply and analog stage with ultrafast switching low noise Caps.
Added Bybee filters in the output stage.
The purpose of the mod was to give the unit a warmer more detailed sound with less harshness and digital glare. The mod succeeeded on all counts. However, when I first received the unit and played it, I was disappointed. The treble sounded muddy and over shadowed by the punchier clearer bass and more foward midrange and that live sound was lost.. After 10hrs of playing and feeling like I made a mistake I called Doug Jesse and he stated that the unit needs to break in and that the first 50 hrs will sound mediocre. And that the unit will not reach its peak sound till after 150-200hrs of break in.
So the last 2 days I have been running the unit for 18hrs per day and now after about 35 hrs I am finally begining to hear a difference. The treble and high frequency is starting to come around but not to the point like before the mod. The music is becoming more open and detailed and I'm starting to feel better about the mod. The music is much more lively and more powerful now. So I'll see how the next 100hrs go and give another update.
I
I had a parallel experience
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackraven
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Replaced the cheap 0608 Burr-Brown op-amps with the more expensive 0627 OA's
....
The purpose of the mod was to give the unit a warmer more detailed sound with less harshness and digital glare. ...
I
I got an Assembage DAC 1.5 for pretty cheap; I wanted it mostly for the HDCD decoding. The sound was marginally more detail for standard CD, and significantly so for HDCD recordings, than components I'd been using, but dry and a bit bright. I had it modded at Parts ConneXion, (who originally produced the Assemblage products). Mods comprised an upgrade to the 0627 op amps, plus gold-on-copper connections and some silver wiring. Total cost was Cdn$355.
Here again, the initial reaction was not so good, but after 30-50 hours of burn in I sensed a significant inprovement. I replaced the standard computer-type power cord with much shorter, Belden shielded cable for some further improvement.
Was it worth the approx . US$300 cost? Given the Assemblage DAC 1.5 as sunk cost, probably yes; compared to buying some other DAC in the first place, or maybe even selling the Assembage and buy another DAC, probably not. And I might have got 33% of the overall improvement just by replacing the PC where the Belden/Wattgate/Marinco combo cost around $40.